Making the vegetarian option more appealing to the mainstream by reframing it from a functional choice to an enjoyable one.
What unsustainable behavior needs to change:
Liseberg, Sweden’s largest amusement park, aims to become a global leader in sustainable park operations by 2025. A key milestone in this endeavour is minimising the climate impact of food and beverage sales.
The Swedisch Behaviour Lab (Beteendelabbet) was hired to examine and investigate how nudging and behavioural design could be used to increase the sale of vegetarian food at one of the park’s restaurants called Café Taube.
The Behavior Lab discovered three key insights by analysing and exploring the decision-making environment of customers, as well as conducting interviews and observing customer behaviour:
Based on these behavioural insights, The Behavioral Lab developed designs and methods to make it easier and more attractive to choose the vegetarian option.
The Green Nudge:
The nudges were tested in an experiment during Liseberg’s high season in the summer of 2019. Sales data were measured over a period of three weeks before, and three weeks after the implementation of the nudge. Throughout the period, the dishes offered on the menu remained the same. The experiment only changed the names of the vegetarian dishes and the placement on the menu.
To address the issue of vegetarian options being perceived as less attractive due to naming and ingredient descriptions, an experiment was conducted to test a more appealing framing.
For example, „Soy steak“ was renamed „Summer plate“.This was further reinforced by placing the vegetarian dishes at the top of the menu and framing them as „Taube’s favourites“.
The result: the sale of vegetarian dishes at Café Taube increased by 76% and the sales of the Summer Plate, which was previously called Soy steak, increased by 275%.
It is evident once again that to influence pro-environmental behaviour among the mainstream, we must make the sustainable option both easily accessible and enjoyable to choose!
Are you aware of any other nudges that promote environmental-friendly diets? Get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com
The Behavior Lab (Beteendelabbet in Swedish) is the first Swedish consulting firm to use applied behavioural science to tackle societal challenges. For about 10 years they have designed interventions based on their interdisciplinary framework, The Behavioral Journey, which combines psychology, service design, and behavioural economics for a wide range of industries and organisations. Their framework was published in their book, Nudging in Practice – How Organisations Make It Easier to Do the Right Thing, in 2019.
From Tauranga to Auckland, New Zealand schools are enthusiastically embracing the fun of sustainable commuting one Wednesday at a time.